Roadmap and Monthly Update [October 2021]
August / September Retrospective
Since August, we’ve had four token launches on Pylon Gateway — Loop Finance, TerraWorld, Nexus Protocol, and Valkyrie Protocol. These launches leveraged a combination of Pylon Pools and Pylon Swaps to distribute millions of tokens to Pylon users. Over the last two months, there have been many successes that we hope to build on and a few lessons we have learned from.
Pylon has seen incredible product-market fit with its no-loss investment product, Pylon Pools. Thanks to you all, in just four months, we have amassed a whopping $150 million dollars worth of deposits. We have proven that we can quickly adapt our products to best serve our valued protocol partners.
As more launches happen on Pylon, we anticipate that different protocols will have different requirements for their token launches. Most recently, we introduced whitelist functionality for Nexus Protocol’s KYC launch on Pylon Swap. Lastly, we successfully migrated to Columbus-5, our largest infrastructure upgrade to date.
What’s coming next?
Lossless NFT Lotteries
We’re excited to announce that the team has been hard at work to bring you new and innovative ways to be a part of the hundreds of new protocols that are beginning to appear in the Terra ecosystem. This week, we will be partnering with Galactic Punks to create the first-ever lossless NFT lottery. Starting on October 27th (UTC 13:00), we’ll be giving out 100 Galactic Punks. The more you stake, the more chances you have to win. We’re also happy to announce that MINE governance stakers will automatically be entered into the lottery. This will be the first of several NFT launches that we have lined up, so stay tuned for more collections coming to Pylon.
Bot-proof IDOs
For the Valkyrie launch, the entire Pylon supply of 15 million VKR tokens were purchased in a matter of seconds, which prevented some of our most loyal customers from participating in the IDO. One of the reasons why Pylon Swap sales have been so challenging is that demand for tokens at IDO prices have greatly outstripped the supply of these tokens.
Inspired by Mango Markets’s token launch and MISO’s batch auction format, Pylon is collaborating with PRISM to experiment with a new IDO model that we’re calling Pylon Scout. This is a new process with the following goals:
- Completely eliminate bot activity
- Ensure that everyone gets the same market price
- Make IDOs time zone agnostic
- Ease overall network congestion
So how does it work? Pylon Scout will have two phases, a contribution phase and a withdrawal phase. During the contribution phase, participants will be able to deposit UST into a vault. As the amount of UST increases, so will the sale price of the token. The more UST in the vault, the higher the final purchase price of the token. Price will be determined by the following formula:
Price = Total UST in vault / Tokens to be distributed
After some predetermined amount of time, the vault will transition into the withdrawal phase whereby users can choose to withdraw their deposited UST if the price of the token is higher than they would like to pay. As users withdraw UST, the price of the token will decrease. At the end of the second period, the tokens will be divided up amongst all the contributors according to their remaining share of UST in the vault.
Note: If the Pylon Scout experiment is successful, future projects launching on Pylon will be able to choose from three different launch models: Pylon Pools, Pylon Swap, and now Pylon Scout. We believe in choice and we want all project teams and their communities to decide what makes the most sense for their respective token launches.
Building out the Pylon Treasury
Lastly, much like Olympus DAO and Apollo DAO, Pylon Protocol wants to begin building out a treasury of productive assets (e.g., LP tokens, aUST, LUNA, etc.). We believe that having a robust treasury of assets will help provide a floor for the MINE token, create a stream of revenue independent from the core Pylon business model, and set the protocol on a path towards long-term success even after MINE emissions run out.
Fairer airdrops
For those of you waiting for airdrops, they are still coming! We are, however, still working on infrastructure to distribute tokens based on time and amount staked instead of just single snapshots in time. This will be a first-of-its-kind implementation and is therefore non-trivial to build. Given community feedback, however, we feel like it’s important to invest in this feature for the long-term as there will be more airdrops coming. The three confirmed airdrops to MINE stakers thus far are TWD, VKR, and PSI. The LOOP airdrop to MINE stakers already occurred at block height 4647600 and if you haven’t claimed it already, you can claim it here.
We’re Hiring!
We need amazing talent to help grow Pylon! There are load of amazing features that we’ve dreamed up but we need to expand our core development team in order to make them real.
Additionally, we’re looking to bring on a part-time community manager to help us manage our social channels. If you’re passionate about Pylon Protocol and love building communities, we want to talk to you!
If you’re interested in learning more about these positions, or if you just love Pylon, reach out through Twitter, send your CV to <contact[@]pylon.money>, or apply through the Terraform Labs job portal.
